


Peaches

by peterparkr



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad Secret Santa 2019, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Whump, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Whump, probably lots of medical inaccuracies sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21912262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterparkr/pseuds/peterparkr
Summary: There’s no response, not even a faint twinge of muscle. Peter tries to listen for a heartbeat, but he can’t seem to focus enough to pinpoint it. Another bubble of thought starts to rise. This could be the reason his spidey-sense is going haywire. Tony could be—He pushes the bubble down.ORPeter and Tony find themselves stranded in the woods after an Avengers mission
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 47
Kudos: 489
Collections: Iron Dad Secret Santa 2019, god tier spider-man fics





	Peaches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desirexwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desirexwolf/gifts).



> Written for desirexwolf for Irondad Secret Santa! I really hope that you will enjoy it :)

There’s something sharp sticking into Peter’s cheek and the air smells like peaches. The peaches are pleasant, the pointy object, not so much. He shifts and cracks his eyes open, expecting it to be dark, but instead light assaults him, filtering through a canopy of leaves. He tries to shield his face from it, accidentally causing the pointy-thing—a branch, he realizes—to dig deeper into his skin. 

More realizations follow, each bubbling up to the surface of his consciousness and bursting into muddled thoughts and sensations _. _ The most pressing two are that he doesn’t remember anything after the call to assemble this morning (was it this morning?) and and  _ everything hurts _ . 

His spidey-sense blares to life, overwhelming in its magnitude. Tendrils of fear strike down his spine and through his limbs as each nerve ending seems to light up, begging him to  _ run. _ When he looks down he’s surprised that he can’t see lightning racing across his arms and shooting out his fingertips.

And then there’s Tony. 

He’s laying a few feet away from Peter, legs sprawled out, head tilted at an unnatural angle. There aren’t many nanites left in his armor, leaving large portions of his skin and undersuit exposed. And there’s blood, too. So much blood. Peter doesn’t know how that wasn’t the first realization. The metallic scent of it starts to overpower the peaches.

Peter sits up, pushing his knuckles into the dirt when his vision blacks out and his head spins. He stays like that for a moment, letting the forest prickle back into sight. The dizziness is replaced by a deep pound, at a slightly different cadence than the throbbing in his neck. He wishes he could give in to the darkness, if only to make the sensory assault stop.

Instead, he crawls over to Tony.

“Mr. Stark?” It doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s low and raspy like he’s a sixty-year-old who smoked a pack a day for the majority of his life. “Mr. Stark?”

There’s no response, not even a faint twinge of muscle. Peter tries to listen for a heartbeat, but he can’t seem to focus enough to pinpoint it. Another bubble of thought starts to rise. This could be the reason his spidey-sense is going haywire. Tony could be—

He pushes the bubble down.

“Mr. Stark, please.” Peter shakes him. “Wake up. Mr. Stark, you need to—please, I need you.”

Tony— _ finally _ —groans. His eyes flutter a few times before staying open. They’re hazy and unfocused at first, until they land on Peter.

He’s alive. The relief is short-lived because Peter’s neck won’t stop throbbing and the lightning feels like it’s slicing through his limbs now. And there’s still blood, the stench of it mixing with the fruity aroma. Peter feels bile starting to rise in his throat. 

“Mr. Stark, are you okay? Can you talk? Can you—god, there’s so much blood.” Peter closes his eyes and tries to focus on controlling his breathing, in through his mouth, out through his nose, so that he won’t have to smell the tang in the air.

“Going to have to postpone that dinner with your aunt, okay? Something tells me we might miss it.” 

Peter opens one eye. Tony’s still horizontal, but he manages to flash Peter a strained grin. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Peter cuts him off, sagging into a half-hug, half-collapse. 

“Something’s wrong. Really wrong, I don’t know, I can’t—” Peter’s whole body is pulsing faster now. The feeling is spreading to his lungs. He knows he’s starting to hyperventilate, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

“Hey, Pete, calm down, it’s okay.” One of Tony’s hands settles on the back of Peter’s head and then almost immediately pulls away. “Shit, kid turn around.”

Peter doesn’t want to do that at all. He latches on tighter. Tony sits up with a pained hiss, pushing Peter with him.

“I need you to work with me, kid,” Tony grumbles as he tries to pry Peter off of him. “Let go. You’re bleeding.”

It surprises Peter enough that his grip falters and Tony manages to shift him around. 

“No, you’re bleeding,” he counters.

“Don’t think so. This isn’t all mine or I’d be dead.”

The words are almost the tipping point, but Peter manages to keep his stomach from twisting completely. He feels Tony’s fingers prodding at the back of his head. It stings, but the pain is almost welcome. He can understand it better than the buzzing throughout his body.

“You must have taken a nasty hit. This is going to be cold, okay?”

Before Peter has the chance to answer, Tony’s gauntlet whirs gently behind him and a cool substance plasters over the back of his head. He flinches away from it, but Tony holds his shoulder, keeping him in place. It feels like a decent portion of his head is being covered. Peter tries to think back to what caused the wound, but it’s all still blank. Even the details from the brief are fuzzy. He can picture Steve standing there, full Captain America get-up. He can see the team gathered around him—Sam, Wanda, Rhodey, the others. The last thing he remembers is Tony rolling his eyes when Steve said something particularly cheesy about teamwork. Nothing else.

“What happened?”

The whirring stops and Tony turns Peter back around. “You don’t remember anything?”

Peter feels his shoulders tense up, closing in toward his ears. He thinks as hard as he can, but all it does is increase the pounding. He shakes his head.

“Don’t panic. I can see you panicking. Thank god you went for a mask. Where is that, by the way? Nevermind. You don’t know.”

Peter reaches a hand up to his cheek. He feels skin, then dried blood—from the branch. He looks around hoping the mask is strewn among the dead leaves and dirt, but nothing red stands out.

“What—” Peter tries again. “What happened?”

Tony hesitates. He fiddles with one of the cracked edges of his armor. Peter has a feeling that he might not know the full story either. “Nothing that should have landed us is this mess. A group of mutants was causing trouble.”

“Where are we now?”

His shoulders rise and fall in a defeated shrug. “Upstate? I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine on that one.” 

Peter chews on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to draw blood. The localized pain is another brief distraction from the throbbing that has settled over him. It’s a little better than it had been, with Tony’s familiar, calm voice talking to him, but it’s still not great. He doesn’t know if he’s ever had his spidey-sense activated for this long without the source of it becoming apparent.

“We should move,” Tony says. “Try to find—Fri? You with us?”

Peter doesn’t hear the AI answer. Tony must not either because he shakes his head and sighs. 

“We’re really in the middle of nowhere, huh? Suit’s busted, no AI. At least this time it’s not snowing.”

Peter frowns, trying to figure out what Tony’s referencing. He keeps talking under his breath, something about history always repeating itself, as he struggles to rise to his feet.

“A little help? Put that super strength to good use?”

Peter bends and lifts Tony to his feet. Tony leans almost his full weight on Peter, even when they’re upright.

“Fucking ankle,” Tony mumbles under his breath. “Goddamnit.”

“Are you okay?” The words come out squeaky, a few notches too high.

“It’s probably just sprained.” His tight, pained grimace that’s probably meant to be a smile says otherwise. “Are  _ you _ okay? You still look like you’re freaking out. Don’t lose it on me now.”

Peter takes a deep breath. It does nothing to prevent the flashes of terror emanating from the base of his skull or the rapid beating of his heart. He thinks of calm things—gentle waves on a beach, a sandwich from Mr. Delmar’s, May’s voice. It doesn’t work.

He shivers.“Something’s wrong.”

Tony’s face is pinched with worry now. “Yeah, you said that.”

“I don’t know w-what it is. There’s so much. It’s too bright. And it smells like peaches, and blood, but mostly peaches. And it’s too quiet. I can only hear us, for miles! God, the peaches. But, I can’t see any. Can you smell them?”

“Okay.” Tony’s using his calm voice. It’s low and slow and Peter hasn’t heard it in a while. Annoyance washes over him. He’s not a fifteen year-old newbie, not anymore. He’s been a full-fledged member of the Avengers for almost a year. He’ll be starting college in the fall. He doesn’t need to be coddled or patronized. “Let’s sit down for a minute.”

The feeling spikes. They can’t stop. They need to keep moving—get out of here as fast as they can.

“No!”

It comes out too loud. Tony flinches. 

“Peter,” he says after a prominent gap of silence. “I think your senses are a little flooded right now. It’s going to be—”

“It’s not that! Something’s really wrong. We can’t stay here _. _ ” 

Tony casts his eyes about the forest, some apprehension creeping into his posture. He gives Peter another once-over. There’s doubt on his face, mingling with concern and stress.

“Please,” Peter begs. “Trust me. Just this once.”

Tony’s cheek twitches and his head dips for a moment. He takes a long, deep breath through his nose.

“You know, I am getting a hint of something fruity,” he says. “Onward?”

Peter nods, tightening his grip under Tony’s shoulder and moving forward. Something urges him to go right, so he angles their path in that direction. Tony complies without any questions.

* * *

The journey is slow and silent as they struggle to navigate the unpredictable terrain with only three good legs between them. Tony’s clearly in a lot of pain, though he tries not to show it.

Peter should be able to help more. But, he can’t find the strength. The intensity of his sixth sense grows each second. He feels like he’s vibrating with it. A deep ache has taken hold, throughout all his muscles and his stomach, which churns more and more with each step. It’s difficult to keep walking, and even more difficult when walking includes propping up a grown man as well.

A wave of dizziness washes over Peter and he staggers a bit to the side. Tony either doesn’t notice, or decides not to comment on it. Peter takes a few deep breaths, letting the black pinpricks dance away before ploughing ahead.

“You know that I do trust you, right?”

Peter almost misses the words, Tony’s voice sounds far away. The feeling is messing with his head, messing with his body. He needs to get a grip. 

“I know,” he replies. 

“It’s just, the way you said it back there—” Tony inhales sharply as Peter attempts to drag him over a large log. “It kind of sounded like you don’t think I trust you all the time.”

Peter curses himself for his choice of words. He does believe that Tony trusts him, but he also believes that Tony babies him, just a little bit, sometimes. That conversation requires more energy than Peter has to give.

“I just meant that it was really—” Bile rises suddenly up Peter’s throat. He swallows. His head is pounding. He can’t think. “What was the question?”

Tony’s eyebrows knit together. “The question?”

“One second,” Peter mumbles.

He promptly unravels his arm from Tony’s back, turns to the side and gags. He drops to his hands and knees and stays there, breathing heavily. One of those breaths catches a strong waft of the peaches and he starts heaving.

“Shit,” Tony says. 

He kneels next to Peter. A hand comes up on to his back, rubbing in tentative circles.

“Sorry.” Peter coughs a few times, wipes spit from the corner of his mouth with his arm. 

He tries to stand back up, but Tony’s hand presses down on his back. Normally, that wouldn’t be any sort of match for Peter’s strength, especially not without a fully-functioning suit, but it’s all he can do not to let his body flatten itself to the ground under the hand’s weight.

Tony maneuvers him so that he’s sitting, propped up against the base of a tree. He grabs Peter’s chin and moves his face back and forth, squinting into Peter’s eyes. It’s hard for Peter to focus on him. Tony splits into two identical replicas that swirl around before merging back into one. 

“You’re more concussed than I thought.” There’s an almost imperceptible waver in Tony’s voice. He wipes a hand over his mouth, but when he moves it away there’s a smile plastered on. “You don’t have as thick a skull as everyone says you do.”

The joke serves two purposes. Peter’s known Tony long enough to recognize that. It’s to cover up Tony’s own fear, but it’s also a test for Peter. 

He leans off the tree to prove that he can sit on his own, ignoring the rush of blood in his head. “‘Everyone’ does not say that I have a thick skull. That’s just Sam.”

Peter doesn’t miss the exhale—a small relieved sigh. He’d passed the test. If he’d let the comment slide, Tony would have assumed that something was really wrong. But, nothing is wrong with Peter. It’s just this place—this cursed forest.

“‘M fine, let’s go.” Peter stands, brushing a hand against the tree as he rises, trying to steady himself in the least conspicuous way possible.

“Funny that you think you have any say in that when you were just puking your guts out.”

“I feel better now, got it out of my system.” It’s only a partial lie. His stomach  _ does _ feel better. The rest, not so much.

“You don’t look good. Kinda pale, kinda  _ green _ , actually. I thought that was just an expression.” Peter glares at him, but Tony just shrugs and continues. “What’s a little break, Pete? We’re going to have to stop at some point anyway. It’s getting darker. The last thing we need is another sprained ankle.”

“We can’t stop.”

“Peter you’re hurt, there’s no sense—”

“I’m telling you that I’m fine. Weren’t we just talking about trust?”

“That’s manipulative.”

“Yes,” Peter agrees. “Now, come on.”

Tony sighs, but he lets Peter wind a hand around his back and limps forward when Peter starts to move. Tony leans more heavily into him than he had before the incident. The extra weight is crushing. It shouldn’t be. Peter’s lifted cars and school buses and on one notable occasion, the Hulk.

They make it another hundred yards before Tony speaks again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

A tingling sensation dances between his fingers. There are static prickles of pain that rise and fall at random across his skin, or maybe deeper. He feels weak, like he could collapse at any moment. 

_ Get out. Run. Danger. _

“Of course.”

Tony’s lips press into a thin line.

* * *

The light fades slowly and then all at once, turning the trees black. The brush and shrubbery fill with oddly shaped shadows that play tricks on Peter’s eyes. Somehow, the forest is even more silent then it had been in the day.

“I’ll give you—that,” Tony pants through gritted teeth. “‘S creepy. We haven’t seen a single animal.”

Peter hums, watching the woods with a wary eye. His senses are strained, trying to pick up on anything dangerous around them (because there is something out there; there has to be and it’s bad because why else would his spidey-sense  _ still _ be bothering him).

It divides his attention from the path in front of them. He takes a step forward and Tony hisses. Peter immediately stops, turning to him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tony says, face screwed up in pain. “Just hit a divot.”

Guilt twists it’s way into Peter’s stomach, unpleasant, but not as bad as the sharp pains from earlier. He can see better in the dark than Tony can. He’s supposed to be watching out for things like that in their path. 

“What’s the hold up?” Tony snaps. Peter knows it’s just an extension of the pain; he’s the only one here for Tony to take it out on. “You’re the one that’s so pressed to keep moving. Let’s go.”

Peter assesses their surroundings. It’s eerie as ever, the feeling ever-present just below the surface of his skin, an itch that he can’t seem to relieve no matter how far they walk. 

“I could carry you,” Peter offers.

Part of him prays that Tony will refuse. He’s not sure if he could manage it for long. Just the thought sends his arms shaking, they’re already struggling under Tony’s weight as is.

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

Tony takes a step forward, back onto his injured ankle. It buckles under the weight and Tony’s body pitches forward.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter cries. He’s narrowly able to keep Tony from falling all the way to the ground.

A string of curses falls from Tony’s mouth, but then he sets his jaw, shooting a side-eyed glance at Peter before standing up straight again. Peter should ask if he wants to stop, or at least make good on his offer to carry him despite the refusal.

But the fear is still building. And there’s a fog rolling in, bringing with it a stronger waft of peaches than before. They can’t stay here much longer. It’s a mantra to Peter’s brain.  _ Get out, get out, get out. _

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers. Even in his low tone, the words seem to echo off the trees around them—the only sound besides the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind.

Tony just grunts and waves a hand in dismissal of the apology. He rearranges the remainder of the nanites around his ankle to stabilize it. For a moment, Peter wonders why he hadn’t done that earlier, before they had started moving, but then he sees one of Tony’s hands ball into a tight fist and curl protectively near his chest, the other squeezing tighter around Peter’s shoulder. He’s vulnerable without the gauntlets. Peter’s not used to seeing Tony like this, out of his element and unsure. He doesn’t like it at all.

It spurs the feeling on, coaxing the alarm bells in his brain up to a near deafening roar. They need to find the end. Peter picks up the pace, ignoring his fuzzy head and aching limbs. He tries to focus on what direction his senses are telling him to go, but that part of his spidey-sense seems to be as jumbled as everything else, the needle of the compass spinning ceaselessly on its axis.

* * *

The forest starts to move. Peter knows that it’s only in his head because Tony doesn’t mention it. It seems like the kind of thing he would bring up—the way that the trees and rocks warp and bend. No amount of blinking stops the motion.

He almost leads them straight into a river, but that Tony does mention, coming to a halt a few feet from the edge where the bank drops off. The water is choppy, almost matching the swirl of the forest. Or maybe the water isn’t choppy at all and that’s in Peter’s mind too. He shakes his head to clear it but nothing changes.

“We going through that?” Tony’s skeptical eyes are shifting between the river and Peter.

“Er, um.” Peter dips his head, letting his eyes flutter shut. The darkness helps. There’s a slight tug to the right. Peter glances to Tony and forces a smile onto his face. “Sorry, this way.”

“Wait,” Tony says.

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck rise as Tony’s arm unwinds from around his shoulder. Peter hadn’t realized how much of an anchor it had become until the warm weight was gone, leaving chills and goosebumps behind.

Tony leans over the bank toward the water, splashing it on his face and over his neck. He glances back at Peter and then pats the ground next to him. “I wouldn’t bet on it being safe to drink, but it feels good. It’ll cool you down.”

Peter’s already cold, except when the flashes of heat and fear take over. And he doesn’t trust himself not to pitch over the side of the bank when he leans down. He shakes his head.

“C’mon, Peter, it’ll take one second. I’m not tricking you into stopping.”

“Um, no thanks. I’m—good?” His voice sound confused, even to him.

Tony squints up at him before sighing and rising to his feet. He hobbles back to his spot at Peter’s side, flicking one of his wet hands at Peter’s face to splatter some water onto it. Peter can pinpoint the location of each drop. They’re icicles slicing through his cheeks.

Peter swallows, shakes his head again. He can feel Tony studying him, and tries to square his face into something neutral. He turns to the right, as his sense had urged him to do moments before. Two steps later, a wave of agony washes over him and his heels dig into the dirt of their own accord. He tries to drag one out, but it’s stuck. There’s a pull in the other direction.

“Um.” A few nervous laughs bubble up, escaping Peter’s mouth before he can stop them. “Other way actually, uh, sorry.”

He does a 180, bringing Tony with him. 

“Peter—”

He takes a tentative step forward. The pain and panic recede, much to Peter’s relief. He nods once. “Yeah, this is—yeah, better.”

He stares straight ahead, knowing that whatever look is on Tony’s face won’t be one that he wants to see. He makes it a few more steps before the feeling returns, so strong that his upper body automatically doubles over, curling around it.

“Wait,” he says, spinning back again.

“Peter.”

He rips his arm from around Tony, covering both his ears. “Stop, I need to think.”

He makes it a little farther to the east this time, before the need to turn around becomes overwhelming. Tony tries to block his path when he goes back the other way; Peter can see his mouth moving, but he can’t hear any words from behind his hands and the incessant ringing that’s taken over in his ears. He paces back and forth, Tony limping after him in either direction, hands grappling for a hold on his arms. On his fifth lap, the hands find their hold, fingers pressing into a vice-like grip just above his elbow. Tony shakes his arm, frantically. It lodges the hand on that arm from Peter’s ear.

“—please! Snap out of it, Peter!”

He blinks between Tony and the forest. They’ve got to keep moving. He doesn’t know which way. They can’t go either way. His gaze lands on the river.

“I think—I think we have to cross it.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up. “Cross it? The river?”

His grip tightens around Peter’s arm as he shakes it a few more times, fear tightening the muscles in his face. Something in Peter recognizes why. There’s nothing Tony can do to stop him if Peter decides on a direction. He’s far stronger.

“We can’t cross the river, Peter, look at it. Look—listen, are you listening to me? Look at it, hey, look at it. Those are fucking rapids. Look at me, Peter, stop—”

Tony’s voice rises in pitch and volume as Peter drifts toward the water. He wouldn’t be surprised if the places where Tony’s fingernails press into his arms were drawing blood.

“Just stop for a second, kid. Jesus, just—”

Peter stares down at the water. It is moving fast, but so are the trees. It could all be in his head. 

“We can’t cross the river, Peter! Damnit, STOP!”

The last word is a shriek that reverberates in Peter’s bones. It’s enough to break the stupor, his whole body falling limp, enough that Tony can drag him back a few yards from the shore and push him to the ground. 

“Shit,” Tony mutters as he lowers himself down, too, carefully positioning himself between Peter and the water. His hands rub over his face, ending at the top of his head tangled through his hair, leaving his eyes wide and bewildered. “What the fuck? What the  _ fuck _ ?”

Spikes rise from somewhere within Peter’s skin, like barbed wire is buried in his blood and trying to crawl to the surface. A lump forms in his throat so fast that he doesn’t have time to even attempt to fight it. He covers his mouth, but the sob bursts out anyway, tears burning in his eyes.

“W-we can’t stay here. It hurts, Mr. Stark, please.”

Tony scrambles to his hands and knees, sliding closer to Peter. “What’s wrong? What hurts?”

Tony’s blurry in Peter’s vision; he can’t tell if it’s from the tears or from everything else. An agonizing pang lances through him, spreading out from his neck and down his spine. The world turns white, and then gray, sprinkled with specks of flashing light. Someone screams.

“It’s okay, shh, shh, it’s going to be okay—”

There’s the scent of grease mixed with deodorant and sweat that he associates with Tony. There’s blood and the ever-present peaches. The roar of the current and  _ cold wet. _

“This  _ is  _ a fucking stupid forest. You were right. I’ll even let you gloat about it, okay? You hear that? That’s a free pass, don’t let it go to waste.”

There’s still the pain, and the fear, but they’re muffled, like he’s experiencing them through a thick layer of wool. He can’t quite touch them.

“Could really use your tingle right now, Pete. Really wish you’d given me more than ‘cross the angry river’ before—”

There are hands cradling his head, calloused and rough, but comforting and familiar. There are whispered assurances and something soft pressing against his temple.

“We’re not in the forest anymore. That’s what you wanted, right? So wake up, okay? Come on, kid.”

The fear seeps away, but the pain stays. The pricks of light blink out and the gray fades to black.

* * *

The peaches are gone and the ground has turned soft. There are weights on his eyelids, but a squeeze to his hand gives him the extra strength to push them up, just enough that he can see through slits.

The forest is gone. The ground is a bed.

“Hi, baby.”

May smiles down at him, squeezing his hand again. Peter squeezes back. He’s safe, his spidey-sense quiet. Rather than pulsing and shaking, his body is floating. He glances down to check if he’s hovering a few inches above the surface of the bed. He’s not.

“I love you,” May says.

Peter mouths the words back before his eyes drift shut. The darkness is pulling him back under. It’s a familiar feeling. Last time, he was with someone else, in someone’s arms.

_ Tony. _

His eyes pop open and he tries to sit up, but his body doesn’t cooperate. It rolls to the side instead.

“S’Tony?”

May’s hand rises to comb Peter’s hair back. “He’s okay, everything’s okay. You can sleep.”

White. Gray. Black.

* * *

Tony’s foot is still in a boot—but a real one this time, not the red and gold of the nanites. There are stitches above his left brow. Peter doesn’t remember a cut there. He could have missed it. Or maybe it happened in the flashes of time between the river and here. It seems important to find out which.

He reaches his hand up to feel above his own eyebrow. His skin there is smooth, no stitches.

“Hey.” Tony says, deadpan, drifting closer to the bed. “How’s it going?”

Peter feels his lips tugging upward, the edges of them crack with the motion. They’re chapped, he clearly hasn’t used them in a while.

“What happened to your—?” Peter taps the spot on his own forehead.

“Oh you know—epic, superhero fight. The rock won.” Tony crosses his eyes and pulls a face as he says it. “While you were a little preoccupied—catching a few ‘Z’s.” 

Peter grimaces. “Sorry.”

“Not forgiven.” Tony crosses his arms and sniffs, but he still gestures for Peter to scoot over and sits on the edge of the bed next to him. “I’m pissed.”

“Aw, come on, why? I said sorry.” 

“‘Why’!? ‘ _ Why _ ’!?” Tony looks around the room incredulously, searching for someone to commiserate with him, but it’s empty, so he turns back to Peter. “Take a guess.”

“I, uh, passed out?”

Tony’s mouth drops open. He blinks a few times before massaging his temples in deep circles. “‘Passing out’ is putting it lightly. Passing out happens when you get dehydrated during gym class. Not exactly the same as biological warfare targeting your damn DNA.”

Even after the syllables turn into words (a little slower than they normally would, everything’s still muffled and slow), Peter still can’t quite comprehend them. “My DNA?”

“Yes, Peter, your DNA. Some government agency released a chemical that was supposed to take out the rogue mutants. Which would have been a bullshit move even if it had only targeted people with the X-gene, but now they’ve wiped out 500 acres worth of wildlife and almost killed—” Tony trails off, not meeting Peter’s eyes. His fists are bunched in the sheets, tension heavy in his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says.

“That part isn’t your fault.” Tony raises his voice a few octaves in a rough imitation of Peter’s. “ _ Trust me, Mr. Stark. _ Seriously? The doc says it probably felt like you were being ripped apart. Why was that not something you thought you should tell me?”

Hindsight always makes things more clear. Everything had seemed so urgent in the forest. He’d been in so much pain, and so confused. He didn’t want to worry Tony, or do anything that would have stopped them from getting out. 

“Would you have? If our positions were switched?”

Tony brings a hand up to smack the back of Peter’s head. It’s light, barely a tap—just enough to get the message across. “How many times do I have to tell you that you’re supposed to be  _ better _ than me?”

Whatever drugs they’d pumped Peter with are starting to wear off. There’s a twinge in his neck that slithers through him, the familiar prickle of fear accompanying it. It’s just an echo of the pains in the forest, but still enough that his body automatically stiffens, preparing for the worst to return.

Tony notices and his face softens. “You feel okay, kiddo?”

Peter nods and then shrugs. Tony presses the little button on the side of the bed.

“They said you’ll make a full recovery, thank god, but it might take a while, even with your enhancements.”

Tony swings his legs over onto the bed. He’s looking at Peter like he’s afraid to look away, like he can’t quite believe he’s still here. Peter doesn’t know what to do with that; he squrims under the weight of the gaze .

“I’ll let your aunt do the rest of the yelling when she gets back,” he says.

Peter laughs. It sends another jolt through him. He tries to surreptitiously curl a hand around his stomach. Tony tracks the motion anyway with critical eyes.

A doctor arrives. She seems to know Tony well. They speak for a few minutes, then she asks Peter some questions. She pumps something into Peter’s IV before she leaves.

Peter’s head grows heavy quickly after that. He lets it tip over onto Tony’s shoulder. He can hear Tony’s chest rumble slightly with fond laughter.

His tongue flops around lazily in his mouth when he tries to speak, but with concentration he manages to form audible words. “Was the peaches, wasn’t it?” 

There’s another rumble followed by a hum. “Yeah, buddy, the chemical smelled like peaches.”

“Knew it,” Peter slurs. “How’d we g’tout?”

“You’re too skinny. Easy to carry.”

Distantly, Peter knows that’s not true. He’s not large, or even that tall, but he’s still a seventeen-year-old kid. Tony’s not a god or super human. He didn’t even have a full suit. But, Peter _ is _ starting to feel floaty again. Maybe Tony could carry him like this.

“How,” Peter repeats. 

“Well, you told me we had to go across the river.”

The current had been too strong. Peter remembers that. He also remembers cold. 

“Tried to make a little bridge across. It wasn’t strong enough—stupid. Nearly knocked myself out when we fell.”

Tony’s warm, now. Peter nestles his head a deeper into his shoulder.

“We were pretty close to the edge of the forest after that. You’d been leading us in the right direction.”

Peter opens his mouth. His reply is nothing more than an incoherent mumble.

“I fiddled with the tracker in your suit for a while. I guess it started transmitting our location again, ‘cause the team found us.”

His eyes keep sticking shut when he blinks. Tony’s voice is fading farther away with each sentence.

“You screamed until we fell in the river, you know. It was scarier when you stopped.”

Someone had been screaming. Peter hadn’t known it was him.

“Don’t do that again, okay, Pete?”

HIs mouth is sticky, too. It doesn’t open when he tells it to.

“I don’t know if you can still hear me, but I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t—”

Peter doesn’t know if he falls asleep or if Tony trails off. The next time he shifts awake, his head is still on Tony’s shoulder and May’s covering both of them with a blanket. Peter can almost convince himself that he’ll never feel pain again.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr!](https://peterparkrr.tumblr.com/post/189882520131/peaches)  
> 


End file.
